Bitcoin Forum

First time BC investor here.

I got a bit of money ready to invest, but I'm wondering whether I should buy now or wait a bit. From years of investing into stocks and other assets, I have a bit of a feeling how it all works and what charts can tell us. The current chart looks really crazy, no doubt about it, and if it was a stock, I would almost certainly wait.

However, BC seems to be about to make its way into the mainstream, it's like a growth stock, its value rising with each bit of trust that is gained, each additional merchant accepting it, every single day that it is rising in price and still staying in existence without major problems.

To wait or to buy, that is the question - your thoughts?

I'm especially curious about the opinion of people who have been INVESTED in BC for 1+ year!

I'd wait a few days before investing now, it's likely that the price may drop quite a bit like when it hit $900, but you never know.

How much have you got to invest? I'd recommend trying out a few alt currencies first to get you started and to play around with. You can check the others here: http://coinmarketcap.com/


And I see what you did there ;).

You said you're pretty expert in trading.. therefore you should know that, whatever one of us can tell you, it would be purely speculations.. no one knows!
Moreover the timeframe matters a lot: which is your horizon? A few days investment? Weeks? Years? In the latter case, every moment is good..

I fully agree with kik1977. any advice is only an opinion and no one knows the true answer.

I personally think Bitcoin is still very low in price, and it has a long way to go yet... but this is just my opinion based on little more than a "feeling".
Im glad i bought at $100, but like everyone else wish i could have afforded much more! (i still intend to buy more too)

What do you mean? It hit 1000$, I believe yesterday.

Thanks, I will play around with a small amount of BC instead of with alt coins. It will be about 5% of the amount I own.

Once it goes up 1000% (if it does), I will sell 10% and thus take off the table what I put into it. That way I can't go below 0 (if I never invest again).

I expected a drop at 1000, and it didn't. As we speak we are jumping again, mtgox past 1200. If you are going long, I advise to buy now about 20% of the total sum you are willing to invest.

I'm far from an expert, and even very good people have a very tough time getting the timing right.

Time frame: Good point, I should have mentioned it's long term. I don't care how long I have to hold, and I'm convinced it will either go to the sky or to 0. If it goes to the sky first, and then later to 0, that's bad for BC, but for my investment it's kind of ok too...

So I have the feeling you are right, almost every moment is good, untill it goes to 0, it will go up, up, up...

Doing it in chunks is the best way, no doubt about it.

Be patient, easier said than done

Scale in gradually if you can wait

BTC hit an all-time high of $900 a couple of weeks ago and people went crazy, then it plummeted in price to $450.

Bitcoin is highly speculative, so you should be willing to lose all. Personally, I believe the current prices are too high and forward looking. Long term, I think the prices are very low.

I am day trading (wish I held my initial 30 bitcoin, but whatever… not the end of the world).

I have a CampBX and MtGox account. I trade on both. Most of my money is in CampBX (75%). What I do is watch the spread between Gox and BX… when the spread is very wide, I buy on CampBX and immediately list my BTC for what I think should be the correct price. Basically, for a long while there was a $20 spread. Now I am seeing $200 spreads… so, I allow a $100 spread as reasonable. This morning I bought 3.7 BTC at exactly $1000/BTC. MtGox was at $1200. So I am selling (waiting) on BX at $1099). I keep an eye on the market and will adjust my ask price if it seems reasonable.

As for my MtGox buy/sell… prices drop very fast, so I wait those out and try to buy low. In and out as quickly as possible. When in doubt, I stay in a cash position on both exchanges.

I have to say - we all look smart with the prices going up and up…. I could easily be holding 3.7 BTC and the price could drop hundreds in a matter of seconds. In fact, this has happened and I held till the price came back. I believe in the long term BTC will go much higher so I am not too worried. And again… it is speculation. I won't be hurt if it goes to zero.

Interesting game there with the spreads. It surprises me that this is even possible.

You should prepared for them to go to 0 anytime, agreed.

For how long have you been owning BCs? When do you think the price could come back a bit - this year, next year?

Dollar cost average

Bitcoin is wild, but you can always get a good price if you spread out your buys over a couple months.

invested here for several years. Now is a good time to buy a small portion of what you wanted to invest, most probably it is going up. There is, however, a large chance of upcoming correction from somewhere around $2000 to somewhere around 300-1000, and that should be where you should buy the rest of the coins. It takes balls to catch a falling bitcoin though, it can be violent and scary, so you need to have money at exchanges and orders ready beforehand - manual would not do it.

From my experience, ask yourself this: how much free time do you have and how much of that time are you willing to spend price checking and waiting for the "right" time to buy in?

After spending lots of time waiting I decided buy in a while ago and I can tell you it is a wonderful feeling to not have to keep checking for the right time to buy. Whether it goes up or down, you are only investing what you can afford to lose (right?) so you can simply sit back and enjoy the ride.

I got wind of Bitcoin in March 2013. I created an exchange by June (I'm a programmer and I work for a stock exchange) but it is not live due to the fact that it's hard to meet the regulatory requirements. I bought my first BTC on CampBX in June with $3k - 30 Bitcoins. I held all the way into Sept and then thought that maybe I should trade on the volatility - an unfortunate decision. Still, I am making money. I also funded my MtGox account with Bitcoin so I can trade on there as well (knowing full well if I want to cash out I have to take a slight loss from the MtGox to CampBX conversion).

I do think we will see a price drop soon ONLY if there is no new good news.

The big events I am waiting for are a company like Alibaba.com accepting Bitcoin or a dollar crash - either will send the price way high. Alibaba is a large China wholesale business. Lot's of US based small businesses buy products there and obviously there is a huge cost built into the currency conversion. If they were to accept Bitcoin it would offer great savings to businesses and Bitcoin would gain a lot more users (people who actually spend BTC).

In the time it took me to make my last post, MtGox price dropped $75. What a crazy market… I love it :)

Simple approach
Buy a bit now, wait a week buy a bit, wait a week, etc.
Once you have some profit you can ease in more money because your more confident and you didn't buy in a local high.

Or the YOLO! approach
 - Go to the bank
 - Max out on a personal loan
 - Go ALL-IN in Bitcoin
 - Wait a month
 - Pull out your personal loan amount and pay back bank + keep profit
 - (alternative outcome) Bitcoin crashes and your the banks bitch or go to jail :P

I think your approach is correct. Honestly, I stay in a cash position and buy in when I feel like trading - and then get out as quickly as possible. If there is a strong price drop, I will buy and hold. It's all good… having fun doing it.

This also applies when buying more BTC than one can afford to lose. A stress-free life is underrated.

So you're not going to hold until you buy the top?

Buy as much as you can as soon as you have the money. Do not wait. Dollar cost averaging is not as efficient of a strategy.

Here is a question for you though: What if I only buy in-person? Is it possible to set something like a limit order (if not, is it possible if the person trusts you and you have done business with them before - has anybody ever done that)?

Wow, nice project there! Good luck!

Good news - right, I view it that way: Good news raises the intrinsic value of BC (more trust). Imagine what will happen if Amazon accepts BCs... wooooooo...!

Sounds obvious, but the time to buy is when others are selling. You can always wait for a down day on strong volume to get a good price, while waiting get an account setup and verified at an exchange like Coinbase so you are ready to go.

Put a buy order *now* at $500.  Let it stand for a week, and if the price is noticeably different, cancel it and put another buy order in at half of wherever the price has gone by then. 

Of course, we may never see another 50% plus drop, but it's happened several times during bitcoin's rise.  Including once (just for a minute though) a couple days ago.

@Cryddit and @xephyr: Same questions as above goes out to you: What if I only buy in-person? Is it possible to set something like a limit order (or is it possible if the person trusts you and you have done business with them before - has anybody ever done that)?

It is also a riskier strategy.  Bitcoin has enough upside that you don't need to maximize risk to make a good return.

Less risky strategies save you from bad decisions when there is a squeeze.

If you only buy in person, then you don't get the wild swings of the market to take advantage of.

If you find someone who has $MILLIONS worth of bitcoin and wants to trade them "quietly" meaning the rest of the world doesn't find out just by watching the blockchain, then you can, I believe, take your smartphone with a bitcoin client on it and meet him, give him a suitcase full of cash, and maybe you'll get a deal.  But it won't be that *much* of a deal, because his price will be based on a loose approximation of how it's averaged over the last few hours, rather than being one of our twitchy exchanges where if the price drops to $500 it won't stay there for more than ten seconds but your limit order will execute in that ten seconds.   

If you find someone who has merely $Hundreds worth of bitcoin, you can do the same thing but don't expect to get a deal.  In the other case you might get a discount because you're cheaper to deal with than trying to unload that giant block on the market and watching the market immediately sink to below the price he's offering it to you for.  The guy whose coin won't move the market when he sells it has no reason to give you a discount.

As far as I know nobody but the markets implements a "limit order" capability, and besides if doing face-to-face trading, you can't do anything if you don't agree on the price in advance.  Your "limit" when face to face is manifest when you simply decline to complete the deal. 

Thanks, I had expected that somehow. Gotta make a decision there - either buying completely anonymous and secure or take advantage of the price swings. It's just so volatile that it is very tempting, but I think I will have to go with the in-person method.

I just bought in for about 1080, i only bought 1 btc. It is expensive and depresses me a little bit as just two weeks ago when it was only about 400 i wanted to try and start buying them but with all the time its taken to get verified and have my wire transfers get in its soared to over 1k. But in the end from everything ive read it seems unlikely that there won't be some moment to come when i can sell it with profit over the coming months/years even at this price, though with that said i still think ill wait for the prophecised drop before investing the majority of my cash.

There are more and more people watching with interest and waiting for a drop. But most bitcoin holders don't want to sell them, even at 1200 USD... There will always be predictions of drops - but there will not always be future drops lower than today's price level.

Localbitcoin.com allows you to buy them with no delay with an escrow system and bank transfer payments.

It's better to not take into account too much what you "read about bitcoin". Nobody knows. It could fall a lot, but it also has an incredible dynamic. It's really the best to buy in smaller chunks.

I will probably divide my amount through six or so and invest every two weeks, if it goes up a bit less maybe and if it goes down a bit more.

Edison Dollars are a better investment.

Very important is to get your account verified as fast as you can. I made my account on Bitstamp when the price was 220 and got verified around 780. I lost quite amount of money with this. Do not make that mistake.

No account, man.

Just a cold paper wallet.

Maybe i misunderstood something, but you need an account to buy from exchange. You can not buy coins with paper wallet.

Every day you wait, it will cost 100 usd more to you.
BUY BUY BUY.

But if we go back to 400s?

Then it is jackpot, you can buy more. :-)

Just wait to buy. There will be a correction in the near term. Wait until the hysteria wears off.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

Take a 10% of your money and step in.
You need to feel this from the inside.
You will know when to continue investing.